While the similarities to Hitler are quite clear in the story, there is no mention of the actual name—until we read Notebook 62. But the ‘hands him a card’ at the end is mystifying; and some of the other references are equally mysterious. If, as is almost certain, this was written in 1939 why are Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin listed? Lenin died in 1924 but Trotsky lived until 1940 and Stalin until 1953; and the other two historical figures were long dead. Moreover, none of them could be considered friends. All the names are crossed out in Notebook 44 but their presence at all is inexplicable. The Max Carrados reference is to the detective created by Ernest Bramah and the story ‘The Game Played in the Dark’; this character and story had already been pastiched in the Tommy and Tuppence collection Partners in Crime, where Tommy emulates the blind detective in the story ‘Blindman’s Buff.
This page from Notebook 62, during the original plotting of‘The Capture of Cerberus’ (despite the reference to ‘destroy human flesh’ and its echo of‘The Horses of Diomedes), may represent Christie’s doodles of a variation on the Swastika.
The Capture of Cerberus (The Labours of Hercules XII)
i
Hercule Poirot sipped his apéritif and looked out across the Lake of Geneva.[1]
He sighed.
He had spent his morning talking to certain diplomatic personages, all in a state of high agitation, and he was tired. For he had been unable to offer them any comfort in their difficulties.
The world was in a very disturbed state—even’ nation alert and tense. At any minute the blow might fall—and Europe once more be plunged into war.
Hercule Poirot sighed. He remembered 1914 only too well. He had no illusions about war. It settled nothing. The peace it brought in its wake was usually only the peace of exhaustion—not a constructive peace.
He thought sadly to himself:
‘If only a man could arise who would set enthusiasm for peace flaming through the world—as men have aroused enthusiasm for victory and conquest by force.’
Then he reflected, with Latin commonsense, that these ideas of his were unprofitable. They accomplished nothing. To arouse enthusiasm was not his gift and never had been. Brains, he thought with his usual lack of modest}’, were his speciality. And men with great brains were seldom great leaders or great orators. Possibly because they were too astute to be taken in by themselves.
‘Ah well, one must be a philosopher,’ said Hercule Poirot to himself. ‘The deluge, it has not yet arrived. In the meantime this apéritif is good, the sun shines, the Lake is blue, and the orchestra plays not badly. Is that not enough?’
But he felt that it was not. He thought with a sudden smile:
‘There is one little thing needed to complete the harmony of the passing moment. A woman. Une femme du monde—chic, well-dressed, sympathetic, spirituelle!’ [2]
There were many beautiful and well-dressed women round him, but to Hercule Poirot they were subtly unsatisfactory. He demanded more ample curves, a richer and more flamboyant appeal.
And even as his eyes roamed in dissatisfaction round the terrace, he saw what he had been hoping to see. A woman at a table nearby, a woman so full of flamboyant form, her luxuriant henna-red hair crowned by a small round of black to which was attached a positive platoon of brilliantly feathered little birds.
The woman turned her head, her eyes rested casually on Poirot, then opened—her vivid scarlet mouth opened too. She rose to her feet, ignoring her companion at the table, and with all the impulsiveness of her Russian nature, she surged towards Hercule Poirot—a galleon in full sail. Her hands were outstretched, her rich voice boomed out.
‘Ah, but it is! It is! Mon cher Hercule Poirot! After how many years—how many years—we will not say how many! It is unlucky.’
Poirot rose to his feet, he bent his head gallantly over the Countess Vera Rossakoff s hand. It is the misfortune of small precise men to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination the Countess had for him. Now, it was true, the Countess was far from young. Her makeup resembled a sunset, her eyelashes dripped with mascara. The original woman underneath the makeup had long been hidden from sight. Nevertheless, to Hercule Poirot, she still represented the sumptuous, the alluring. The bourgeois in him was thrilled by the aristocrat. The old fascination stole over him. He remembered the adroit way in which she had stolen jewellery on the occasion of their first meeting, and the magnificent aplomb with which she had admitted the fact when taxed with it.[3]
He said:
‘Madame, enchanté—’ and sounded as though the phrase were more than a commonplace politeness.
The Countess sat down at his table. She cried:
‘You are here in Geneva? Why? To hunt down some wretched criminal? Ah! If so, he has no chance against you—none at all. You are the man who always wins! There is no one like you—no one in the world!’
If Hercule Poirot had been a cat he would have purred. As it was he twirled his moustaches.
‘And you, Madame? What is it that you do here?’
She laughed. She said:
‘I am not afraid of you. For once I am on the side of the angels! I lead here the most virtuous of existences. I endeavour to amuse myself, but everyone is very dull. Nichevo?’
The man who had been sitting with the Countess at her table had come over and stood hesitating beside them. The countess looked up.
‘Bon Dieu!’ she exclaimed. ‘I forgot you. Let me present you. Herr Doktor Keiserbach—and this—this is the most marvellous man in the world—M. Hercule Poirot.’
The tall man with the brown beard and the keen blue eyes clicked his heels and bowed. He said:
‘I have heard of you, M. Poirot.’
Countess Vera overbore Poirot’s polite rejoinder. She cried:
‘But you cannot possibly know how wonderful he is! He knows everything! He can do anything! Murderers hang themselves to save time when they know he is on their track. He is a genius, I tell you. He never fails.’
‘No, no, Madame, do not say that.’
‘But it is true! Do not be modest. It is stupid to be modest.’ She turned to the other man. ‘I tell you, he can do miracles. He can even bring the dead back to life.’[4]
Something leaped—a startled flash—into the blue eves behind the glasses. Herr Keiserbach said:
‘So?’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘Ah, by the way, Madame, how is your son?’
‘The beloved angel! So big now—such shoulders—so handsome! He is in America. He builds there—bridges, banks, hotels, department stores, railways—anything the Americans want.’
Poirot looked slightly puzzled. He murmured:
‘He is then an engineer, or an architect?’
‘What does it matter?’ demanded the Countess Rossakoff. ‘He is adorable. He is wrapped up in iron girders and things called stresses. The kind of things I have never understood nor cared about. But we adore each other.’[5] Herr Keiserbach took his leave. He asked of Poirot:
‘You are staying here, M. Poirot? Good. Then we may meet again.’
Poirot asked the lady:
‘You will have an apéritif with me?’
‘Yes, yes. We will drink vodka together and be very gay.’
1
Unlike the collected version, which is set unequivocally in London, the previously unpublished version has, like many other Labours, an international flavour. From the first sentence we are ‘abroad’ and, for the third time in the Labours, in Switzerland (perhaps significantly a neutral country). Poirot has already visited the country during ‘The Arcadian Deer’ and ‘The Erymanthian Boar’.
3
This is a reference to the first meeting of Vera Rossakoff and Poirot in ‘The Double Clue’, published in December 1923, when he unmasked her as a jewel thief. They subsequently met four years later in
4
This is a reference to
5
The passage about the Countess’s son is almost word-for-word the same as in the collected version of the story.